


The Boy and The Knight.

by JustACapybara



Category: League of Legends
Genre: LMAO, also ao3 screwed up the tags 'cuz I made one too long so uh, also i just wanted to write a demacian soldier with healing magic, also like yeah uh gore fuckin' be advised squeamish peeps, anyway it's 3 am me talking this might be all bs, eh, good luck figuring out the order these were supposed to be read, it's DELISH baby, judge yourself, man can you tell I came from tumblr by how I use my tags always, not like HARDCORE gore but quite a bit o blood, so much angsty potential
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustACapybara/pseuds/JustACapybara
Summary: A night battle. Whether the Noxians or Demacians instigated the attack, it didn't matter. Hundreds of dead Demacians. Thousands of Noxians torn apart.And yet.Not all were granted the Wolf's bite, nor Lamb's arrow. So begins the tale of one such boy.
Kudos: 3





	The Boy and The Knight.

The sun was rising. The two forces moving west, one routing, one chasing. lags from the Demacians and the Noxians scattered across the landscape, burnt, covered in blood, mud, tears, sweat, piss, and guts.

Resting against a rock, two men held each other.

One, young. Barely older than his sixteenth or seventeenth year on this earth, one hand clutched against his armor, the other wrapped around a Demacian's shoulder. Blood seeping into his hands, his breathing shallow. Two broken arrow shafts at their feet, one slick with gore.

"It's hard to breathe." He said, clutching his hand tighter. "I'm trying to stay breathing. I'm trying to stay breathing."

"Shhh. It's ok. It's ok." The Demacian was old. Old, old indeed. A scarred veteran, his silvery armor decorated with blue cloth, adorned with golden inscriptions of courage, of fighting for peace, of a brighter future. A standard-bearer of dozens of campaigns, a survivor amongst them all. Beard scorched from the fires that had raged.

He hated this.

This scene.

It was too familiar.

"Come on, kid." He tapped the boy's cheeks. He had ungloved himself long before the battle was over. It explained the many blisters and callus in his hands, the rough skin, the warmth from hands rarely idle. The boy's cold cheeks. All the blood... well. Too busy pouring from his stomach to actually flush his tanned cheeks. Northern features, some poor Freljordian kid with dreams of glory under the Empire's banner. He understood the appeal. The boy's presumably red hair completely shaved fiery dots on his head all that hinted at their existence and color.

The man was old. Unlike the boy, his head had balded naturally. Age had not been gracious with his complexion, either. Wrinkles, crow's feet, heavy bags under his eyes. Not unlike the crust of a freshly baked bread, a golden brown from the heat of every long campaign he had overseen, cracks and imperfections like the Angels' very own way of telling him of his failures.

And oh, the failures he had to talk about.

"Kid. You're with me, right? Your name? You got a name?"

"Yeah. I'm listening." Exasperated, a crack in his voice. The Knight couldn't tell if it was the pain or the blood loss getting to him. "I'm... listening."

"Where you from?" Anything to keep him going. Talking. Awake. Anything.

"Where...?"

"Where are you from."

"The... The Foundling. F-foundling village. It's... it's way up there. We had... oh, I marched south so long..."

"Yeah. Yeah? You didn't like it up there?"

"It was nice... but I... the emp--" His story got cut short by a coughing fit. Blood pouring out of his lips and into the soft, wet ground below, mere drops in the ocean that had been poured that night.

"Hey, hey, hey. Hang in there. It's ok. It's ok if you can't talk." 

"I'm..."

"Shh."

"It's getting cold." The boy spat out a ball of coagulated blood, tears streaming down his face. "I'm gonna..."

"Shh. Shhh." The soldier pulled him close, tightly. Eyes locked with the boy's, that slowly started to close his own. 

The boy closed his eyes. The heart still beating, slowly, slower.

The Knight... the Knight was also used to this.

He loathed it.

Fingers digging into the boy's soft leathery armor, feeling the shoulders go limp as consciousness faded from the young man.

Every bit of this was torture.

He couldn't stand it any longer.

Soft words, spoken under his breath. Meaningless prayers to Angels who surely had forsaken him for the act he was about to commit.

Moving his bare fingers to the dying soldier's wound, pressing hard.

Light, emanating softly from within.

The prayers continued, the flesh knitting itself, slowly, but surely the blood stopped flowing.

It was horrible.

He was a Demacian. This was an atrocity. A sin. A complete and utter betrayal of every single one of his ideals, morals.

There were usually no Noxians to nurse and heal, seeing as they usually fought to the last man. Being kind to your fellow man and woman, compassionate... that was to be expected. To stoop so low as to use something forbidden, ugly, dangerous. For what, a mere life?

A...

mere life.

Some kid from a village up north.

Not Darius. Not any Blackhand. No renowned general, no frothing admiral. No brilliant strategist, no cunning assassin.

Some child. Barely, if of age.

And he betrayed his country for it.

Not out of fatherly love. Not out of some sense of duty. He wasn't a doctor - despite his natural skills, he'd probably have his hands sliced if he showed up to any doctor's office and attempted to do any of this, and rightfully so!

But...

But it felt so wrong.

Dozens of campaigns. Allowing himself to stay behind.

Again and again, destroying his country's beautiful, pristine ideals.

For this.

Men, women, boys, girls, left behind, clutching their wounds, barely conscious. Most never stayed conscious enough to get this far. Noxians or Demacians. Or any other force he had to fight.

A heinous act of treachery.

For... this.

The boy was sleeping, now. He wasn't a doctor. He didn't know if his vitals were stable OR if he was going to survive the next day - the next hour. Maybe he'd stay alive. Maybe this foolish, cursed Knight had accidentally grown a bone through his intestines. Such was the cruel nature of magic, uncertainty, danger, an even more painful death to a child that was slowly but surely arriving at something resembling peace.

Denying the Lamb her shot.

"You'll be ok." He blurted out, his heart heavy. With pain. Something else, however. A tingle of pride quickly squished under the immense weight of this sin. 

He slung the boy over his shoulder.

Walking deeper into the battlefield, away from the now fading screams of battle, of the torches that were slowly getting snuffed. A counterattack? Reinforcements? He didn't care. 

A dozen campaigns, uncountable battles. Wounds that should have killed him, denied.

Death, again and again, denied.

But...

He just couldn't bring himself to actually let go. To let them die. To let them suffer.

If he was to deny death, to commit sins, then so be it. With a tainted soul, with hands soaked in the mana that should never have coursed through his veins.

Was it right?

No. No, his brain - his heart above all, knew it was wrong. Death came to everyone. Death... death was normal. This was war.

But he always found himself like this. Walking over the bodies. Looking for a heartbeat. As if his very soul was connected to the life of others. Yet another burden he had to bear.

"Hello?" His voice boomed over the now silent battlefield. Even the carrion birds had flown away due to the raging fires, the smoke blotting out the sky mere hours ago. Now... clear. Illuminating his path, and the gore left in the wake of two armies.

His march continued into the sunset. No replies. No hearts. Nothing.

But the sun kept rising.

And maybe, when this was all said and done, when he returned home as the sufferer of a brutal loss, or yet another victory for this veteran of war...

Maybe he could go on another day with this secret.

Maybe he could ask this kid what his name was.

Maybe, just maybe.

He could save another nameless nobody... and give them another chance.

Maybe his curse was... useful.

Maybe he had a purpose beyond slaying and bearing symbols, even.

He smiled.


End file.
